Cleansing Your Home of Mess and Material Items

2013 is a new year and can be a new you if you apply the appropriate changes. In this hub I wanted to talk about cleansing your home of clutter and items that can hold your potential back from exposing itself and creating a greater environment for you to live in and be around your loved ones. These tips are basic and probably are common knowledge but there seems to be an issue of how people donate or trade possessions with each other whether it's due to a lack of organisation skills, lack of item knowledge or parting with sentimental gifts. I will break down each section below so you can come back and get to your area of interest faster and hopefully you can learn something new that you can apply to your situation. You can sort your items into the following categories or piles to make it easier to identify which is which and to give you a full view of each item.

• Items To Sell
• Items To Donate
• Useful Items To Keep
• Items To Send As Gifts
• Sentimental Items

The majority of your possessions will probably fall into this category, regardless of condition there will be a likely chance that somebody out there will be looking to purchase. As the saying goes "one man's rubbish, is another man's treasure" There are thousands of ways to advertise and sell your possessions but I will share with you some of the one's I like to use. eBay, Amazon, Gumtree, Craigslist, Yard sales, car boot sales, pawn shops, friends and family, cash4gold, thrift stores and many many others. If the item won't be useful to you now or in the future or to anyone you know them put it in the pile to sell.

The best use of your items that you cannot use or sell is to donate them to people who need or could use these things to increase their standards of living. You can donate item's to friends and family, Charity shops, Homeless people, Local schools, Local support groups and anybody who you think may benefit from the items you are donating. I like to donate my used books to the local library, although they have large funding, I like to think if someone has free access to the books then maybe they can gain some of the information that I have, sharing is caring.

This is a category that has a fine line between keeping certain possessions or removing them from the home. Most of the item's that you are selling, donating and gifting are all useful items that will provide service to a situation that requires them, but not you current situations. So what is the difference that needs to be highlighted to deem it a useful item? Things such as extension cables, tools, fuses, a spare of items you use on a daily basis, things along those lines. This category can also help you decide on what you want to do with things that you are indecisive about, will you watch all of the movies you own again? do you really need that many pairs of shoes? if it doesn't serve a purpose then it has to go.

This category is pretty much the same as the donate one, but with the difference of you can save your best quality or brand new items to send out as gifts to friends for special occasions, Christmas gifts or even a gift to a new neighbor in the area. You can also give someone a possession of yours that they have always been fond of if you decide to get rid.

This is probably the hardest part of your clear out, do you really need to keep that jewelry that you never really liked that your grandparents passed down to you? or can you get some money for it and allow it to be in the possession of someone who admires it? If the items are genuinely important to you and can be stored away to be kept safe then I think you should keep them. If you have big old clunky furniture taking up half of your living room and you think that you would like the space it takes up then it's time for it to go. If you can't decide on the future of an item then you can always walk away and spend some time to think about your decision, you don't want to donate an old watch and go back after 2 weeks to reclaim it.

Now you have started to think about your possessions and what to do with them, you need to stop yourself from having to do the same thing next year. Curb your shopping habits, we all have a little hoarder nature inside of us but next time you see that pair of shoes on sale just remember that you have 20 other pairs at home, let them pass and allow someone else to enjoy them and fill up their house with items that they will throw out in 5 years. Purchase items that you need to replace others or as a spare, such as batteries, coffee filters etc. Once you learn to curb your spending you will have a clutter free home that you and family will love to be in as well and a fatter wallet, who can say no to that?